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Ohio Elementary School Cheerleaders Raffle Semi-Automatic Rifle

Bryan Woolston/Reuters

An elementary school cheerleading squad for children aged 5 - 12 with about 150 members in New Richmond, Ohio, is facing condemnation for raffling off a semi-automatic rifle to raise money. The mother of a 7-year-old cheerleader raised the alarm after her daughter came home with raffle tickets for an AM-15 Optic ready rifle to raise money for uniforms and club outings. “This is absurd, you’re having elementary kids sell your AR-15. Why?” the mother told CNN. “I highly doubt that something would happen with the gun, but say it did. Say one of the kids in the high school got a hold of it — got the AR-15 or AM-15 and shot up a school with it, and I’m the one that sold the raffle ticket to his dad?” The club chaperone Robert Wooten said they had never received complaints in all the years they raffled rifles. “It’s easy to sell. It’s a hot item,’ Wooten told CNN. “This was not a way for us to promote gun violence or incite violence. We are going to reevaluate this next year.” The raffle winner will be announced Sep. 3 and will have to go through an FBI background check to take the prize home.